


The Mystery in Apartment 103

by Bluewolf458



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 16:19:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4571274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People have been dying in apartment 103</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mystery in Apartment 103

The Mystery in Apartment 103

by Bluewolf

Apartment 103 had been empty for some months - ever since its last owner, Bob Kane, committed suicide after killing his wife. Several people had looked at it, but on hearing why it was empty, they had all changed their minds about buying it.

Now three people, two men and a woman, were standing at the door; one of the men unlocked it.

Mickey and Danny watched from a hidden corner as the three went into the apartment.

"Do you think these ones will move in?" Danny whispered.

"Hard to say," Mickey replied. "I've heard some of the neighbors talking. Most of them seem to think that nobody will ever buy the apartment, but Dave Hanratty said he thought that for some people its history would be an attraction. We'll just have to wait and see."

"Must we wait?" Danny asked. "It'd be nice to see what they're like. We could get in... "

"We don't want to be seen," Mickey reminded him. "The family emptied everything out of it, remember? There's nowhere we could hide."

"Oh. Right. I'd forgotten."

Mickey sighed quietly. Danny was a good friend, but really not very intelligent; without Mickey there to keep him right, Danny would have run into trouble long ago.

They continued to watch until the door opened and the three people came out; as the realtor locked the door, the woman said clearly, "It looks exactly like what we've been looking for! I never thought we'd get anything so nice inside out price range."

The three left the building, leaving Mickey and Danny still watching.

***

Walt and Sandra Bruce moved in a few days later.

Mickey insisted on waiting for another week to give the Bruces time to settle in properly before the two friends slipped into the apartment in the middle of the night. They explored it cautiously, being careful to leave no signs of their presence.

Everything was absolutely tidy, the floor swept and polished.

"Just like any house someone has just moved into," Mickey murmured. "It's all clean now, but in a month or two they'll begin to get careless, start to leave things lying around. It'll be more fun to visit after that."

"Maybe," Danny replied. "But... "

"But?"

Danny shivered. "You know I never really liked this place when the Kanes were here," he said. "Something worried me. When it was empty, it was fun to come in and play around, but now... I have that same feeling. It's making me nervous. I'd... I'd just as soon we didn't come back here. There's all the rest of the building for us to play in, after all."

Mickey looked thoughtfully at his friend. Danny didn't often express an opinion; normally he seemed to be perfectly happy to follow where Mickey led - and Mickey knew that apart from an inbred caution he didn't have a nervous bone in his body.

Danny had a more active imagination.

But Mickey had to admit that Danny had several times expressed reservations about apartment 103 before Bob Kane arrived home one day with a gun... and used it.

"I wish we could warn the Bruces," Danny said unhappily.

"How could we tell them?" Mickey asked. "And even if we could make them understand, they'd want specifics, Danny, and you don't have any."

"I know," Danny said. "But I wonder what it was that made so many other people decide not to buy the place."

"Just the thought of a murder and suicide in the main bedroom," Mickey said, a little impatiently. "Remember, that's what Dave Hanratty said. Although it might be a selling point for some people, most folks don't like the idea of living in an apartment where they know someone has died even a natural death, let alone a violent one - and almost every house that's more than a few years old must have had someone dying in it at some point."

***

It was three weeks later, when Mickey and Danny were making their way along the corridor outside apartment 103 when a loud BANG made both of them jump.

"Mickey," Danny said, his voice unsteady, "that sounded like a gunshot."

There was another bang.

The doors of apartments 102 and 104 opened and the occupants came into the corridor. Mickey and Danny crouched back, out of sight.

The men from the two apartments met in from of the door of 103.

"That sounded like gunfire, Nick," one said.

Nick nodded. "My wife is calling the cops," he said as he tried the door. Surprisingly, it opened, and they went in. The living room door was open and they paused at the door, looking in.

"Oh, God!" Nick exclaimed.

Mickey and Danny slipped in unobtrusively and hid behind the couch, peering around the end to watch what was happening.

Sandra Bruce was slumped in an armchair, a huge bloodstain on her blouse. Walt Bruce lay near her, a gun beside his right hand, and part of the back of his head was missing.

"I don't think there's anything we can do," Nick said.

"Let's wait out in the corridor," the other one - Mickey thought he'd heard the man called Roger - said. The two men went back out.

"It's the same as the Kanes," Danny said. "And Mickey - I don't have that... that nervous feeling any longer."

A distant siren grew louder. It stopped outside the building. Two or three minutes later two men in police uniform came in. Behind them, in the doorway, Mickey could see Nick and Roger hovering, clearly unwilling to enter again.

One of the policemen went to Sandra, the other to Walt. After a moment they raised their heads and looked at each other.

The one beside Sandra shook his head. "Dead," he said. "I'd say she was killed instantly."

"It seems pretty clear what happened," the one beside Walt said. "For some reason Mr. Bruce shot his wife, then killed himself."

"But it's the second murder-suicide in this apartment inside a year," Roger said from the door.

As more people arrived, crowding into the apartment, Mickey and Danny looked at each other, then slipped quietly away.

Whatever had happened, whatever had caused two apparently happily married men to kill their wives and then themselves, the puzzle was more than two mice could ever hope to solve.

 


End file.
